LETTER: County should look to reduce costs, not raise taxes

Tuesday

Apr 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 30, 2013 at 5:11 PM

Lewis Guignard

As the Board of County Commissioners is working on the 2014 budget, I read the Gaston County budget for 2013.

Certain things stand out. Unless county staff has had a change of heart, they have no intention of trying to keep taxes as low as possible but are seeking every avenue they can to increase taxes and wages for the bureaucrats at the expense of the taxpayer. Examples abound.

In the overview of the 2013 adopted budget, found online, County Manager Jan Winters tells the reader that the Locke Foundation has stated that 85 percent of the county budget is due to state mandates. By twisting the meaning of that statement, Mr. Winters leads one to the conclusion that the state requires the county to spend the amount of money it is currently spending and that amount canít be reduced. This is typical bureaucratic tripe. The statement that 85 percent of the services the county provides may be required by the state does not lead to the conclusion that there is no way to save on providing those services.

Certainly efficiencies can be found and reductions in costs to perform the required services can occur, but only if one wants them to occur. But Mr. Winters is not so inclined and so leads the reader a different direction.

Elsewhere, Mr. Winters tells us of other counties which have increased the pay of their employees and thus so should we. Wonderful, he picks his examples. He could instead tell us of the counties which havenít increased their pay. Why did he not? Thatís an easy answer; it wouldnít serve his purpose.

We are told Gaston schools are older than schools in Mecklenburg, Iredell, Cabarrus and Union counties due to our low growth rate. What is the point of this statement? He may just as well say: if the sun comes up, it will be in the sky. If the county is growing in population, then we will need more schools. If we build schools for these new students, they will be new schools. Since we arenít building schools, the schools are older. It seems obvious.

Instead of how old the school buildings are, we should be asking the only legitimate question which is: are the schools we have well maintained and in satisfactory condition to meet the educational needs of the children. Conversely to this, Mecklenburg has burdened their taxpayers with new schools, tearing down older ones just to rebuild, but that hasnít related to better educational results. Gaston needs to keep its focus on educational results, not buildings or the age of buildings or how many staff need be hired, but how well the students are learning.

Mr. Winters has the audacity to tell us our tax rate isnít high enough. How he rationalizes that is simplicity itself. He says that by following his recommendations, Gaston County will have the second-highest tax rate in the state, where previous to that it would be only the seventh-highest.

Obviously, he thinks that is a tough sell, so he decides to use a different measurement, one which he can sell better. Looking around for what is available he finds that property taxes paid per person is a much better number to use. There, Gaston only ranks near 30th from the top. It doesnít change the tax rate from being the second-highest in the state, but now he can talk about being in the middle.

The problem here is while he says using that value is a more accurate assessment, he is in fact attempting to mislead the taxpaying public, but more importantly, its purpose is to mislead the county commissioners who set the tax rate. The fact is our tax rate is close to the highest in North Carolina. In a county with a high unemployment rate, those who have the security of a government job should be glad to have that job and shouldnít be clamoring for a raise, especially when that raise requires a tax increase on the people who already pay close to the highest rate in the state.

Instead of trying to find ways to tell us how wonderful a job he is doing, and why taxes should be higher, Mr. Winters should be trying to find ways to reduce costs to better serve his employers, the taxpayers of Gaston County.